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Welcome to the latest issue of the 'Visualising Data Newsletter', chronicling the most insightful and delightful data viz content every month, straight to your inbox.

Each month I collect, curate, then publish a selection of links to 50 of the best, most interesting, most thought-provoking data visualisation-related content I've encountered during the previous month. In this issue I chronicle some of the best content I saw published during March 2025.

I hope you continue to find this newsletter useful whether you are working on a dataviz, working in dataviz, or working towards working in dataviz. To catch up on all previous monthly issues visit my Newsletter page.

Thanks, as always, for reading and see you next month with another digest of visualisation goodness.

Andy

Latest from me...

Firstly, some recent posts or announcements relating to my professional services and activities.

Visuals

The freshest data visualisation (or related) design pieces and collections.

7. What Living in New York is Like Now: From Rent to Rats | Bloomberg​

In the aftermath of the pandemic, "New York's vaunted status as a destination for anyone aspiring to succeed in business or culture faced an existential threat". Is New York back? That depends on what metrics you're using. "Bloomberg News analyzed dozens of data indicators that together show a highly uneven recovery from that shock."

8. What is in a name? | The Economist​

Always a dataset offering rich possibilities for analysis and visualisation, this is a lovely interactive from analysis by Sondre Ulvund Solstad and visuals by Filippo Teoldi.

9. RO Historical Data Viz | Coda.io​

Found via Attila Bátorfy, a huge online collection of Romanian historical data viz works curated and published by Răzvan Zamfira.

10. Which countries to refugees come to the UK from? | Georgina Sturge on Bluesky​

An update to the classic stream graph with new data revealing striking patterns of human movement.

11. Here’s What the Rise of Clean Energy Looks Like From Space | New York Times​

Produced by the superstar, Mira Rojanasakul, this work reveals what "a constellation of satellites orbiting 250 miles above Earth’s surface shows about how solar and wind have taken off in recent years."

12. Infopoetry​

From the Density Design Lab, "How do we reconcile the description of a phenomenon with the experience we have about it? A “poetic” approach to data could help: there are moments in the data-journey when “feeling” the phenomenon behind the data could be as relevant as accurately “seeing” the data that represent it."

13. See all the tariffs Trump has enacted, threatened and canceled | Washington Post​

A really superbly conceived and executed interactive showing the ebb and flow of Trump's trade war and revealing how so little logic or rational thinking lies behind it all.

14. Inside Russia's Shadow War in the Baltics | Financial Times​

"We analysed suspected sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea as European nations prepare themselves for a longer-term confrontation with Moscow."

15. The Lives Lost in Gaza | Reuters​

"A closer look at those killed in the conflict so far."

16. Measles Cases Are Surging | Scientific American​

Some smart analysis and visuals to look at why this is happening in the US

17. How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data | Washington Post Opinion

Wonderful piece by Amanda Shendruk looking at the smoke-and-mirrors act Trump is performing to hide or purge statistical data that may be inconvenient to his agenda.

18. See How Elon Musk’s Team Inflated, Deleted and Rewrote Its Savings Claims | New York Times​

More excellence this month from the NYT but its a bit more Trump stuff, or more specifically its about Musk wrecking ball approach to cut Government spending and his department's lies about what savings are being realised.

19. When You Will Die | Flowing Data​

What's that, you want something cheerier? Sorry, not yet, because Nathan's here to reveal some breaking news: "With absolute certainty, you will die. When will it happen? That is a trickier question. But we can use what we do know and run simulations to get a more accurate and more meaningful answer than average life expectancy."

20. Three decades of PlayStation evolution | South China Morning Post​

Stunning graphic that always makes me yearn to have had chance to see the original in full glorious print form.

21. Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it | The Guardian​

"The Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed by Fema but then deleted"

Learning

Relevant articles, interviews, or videos to help further your development in data viz.

25. The End of Innovative DataViz? What's Really Happening in the Industry? | Elevate on Youtube​

More insightful conversations reflecting on this general topic and responding to the posts linked above asking where the field is and in what shape is it in right now.

26. How ProPublica Uses AI Responsibly in Its Investigations | Propublica​

Via Rob Simmon, an interesting piece about using AI responsibly to fuel data-driven investigations.

27. Hello custom marks with Plot | Jo Wood on Observable​

"Want to create your own custom marks in Observable Plot, but don't want to go full D3? I've created a guide with 6 approaches of varying sophistication for specifying reusable custom marks."

28. “Data Moves:” The Power of Transitions Between Charts | FILWD on Substack​

I've always loved how Enrico's researcher mindset operates at the edges and in the gaps of data visualisation understanding. In this piece he talks about 'one of the most neglected aspects of data visualization is that extracting knowledge from data often requires going through a sequence of charts'.

29. "Interactive Dynamics For Visual Analysis" | Alark Joshi on Bluesky​

A timely reminder from Alark of the classic paper "Interactive Dynamics For Visual Analysis" by Jeff Heer and Ben Shneiderman: "such an exquisitely written overview of datavis interaction paradigms. Great paper to introduce students to the various aspects of interaction in data visualization"

30. We can always talk about maps | Observable HQ​

A really nice interview with Observable's 'Data Visualization Engineer', Fil Rivière, about "his path into data visualization, what he likes in a map, what he’s excited about next, and why he’s wondering if we need a “slow cartography movement.”

31. Debating the purpose of (a) data viz | Amanda Makulec on Bluesky​

There was a lot of debate (and, primarily, criticism) about a New York Times opinion piece graphically plotting what 10 writer's rated as mattering during Trump's first month. This post is valuable in itself but also nests within it Francis Gagnon's reaction and a stream of other comments and threads.

32. #RainfallRescue | Ed Hawkins on Bluesky​

"Five years ago today, most historical UK monthly rainfall observations were not available to scientists. But the 66,000 pieces of paper containing the data had been scanned. With covid lockdown approaching we saw an opportunity to transcribe the data. RainfallRescue began..."

33. Behind the Scenes: The Middle Ages | Big Charts on Substack​

Every 'behind the scenes' piece by Alvin Chang immediately qualifies for entry into this newsletter. This one is about a Pudding viz concerning 'Why middle school sucks'.

34. Maybe you SHOULD judge this book by its cover… | Tableau Fit​

Bridget Cogley, co-author of the book 'Functional Aesthetics' argues "you can’t write a book on functional aesthetics and not consider the external packaging" and talks through the process of creating the book's cover design.

35. Unusual election maps | Let's Make a Map​

Patrick Stotz writes about unusual election maps and specifically some that he recently created for Der SPIEGEL, focusing on Germany's primary elections.

36. How to Create a 3D Map of a Wildfire | Esri​

Master mapmaker Lauren Tierney offers a tutorial on 'How to Create a 3D Map of a Wildfire'

37. Towards softerware: Enabling personalization of interactive data representations for users with disabilities | Arxiv​

A pre-print of a paper authored by Frank Elavsky et al, exploring whether "one size fits all" is really enough for chart accessibility? (spoiler: no).

38. What’s the closest we have to Wikipedia for data sets? | RJ Andrews on Bluesky​

Some useful resources suggested in response to RJ's question, which is something I always have a curiosity about and am always seeking to expand my bookmark collections about. To which I have also added 'Work With Data' - 'Analyze, visualize and extract data from open sources, unified in a single ontology & augmented with unique AI.'

News & Sundries

Latest developments, announcements, or announcements affecting the data viz world, as well as additional references to pieces covering broader data, tech, or design matters.

40. Start With Data | Flourish​

Although it was released in April, I had the fortune to play with this new feature during March before launch. It offers an excellent alternative entry point for using the tool when you may not already have a set idea of the chart you intend to use and need both a set of logical, viable options as well as just some occasional inspiration.

41. Bits and Bytes Don’t Leave Bones | Anthropology News​

Fascinating thoughts from Will Cararei, "Migration is always more than just a transfer—it is a point of tension where preservation, power, and priorities intersect. Cultural artifacts, traditions, and knowledge do not simply move; they shift, adapt, and sometimes disappear in the process. Digital artifacts follow the same patterns."

42. Patterns in Islamic Art​

As the URL implies, this offers a vast collection of patterns from Islamic Art which offers bundles of delightful geometric inspiration.

43. FiveThirtyEight is shutting down as part of broader cuts at ABC and Disney | Nieman Lab​

The titan of political and sporting data analysis and visualisation was closed down in March. Not just closed down but completely deleted which is appalling

44. Introducing a New Project to Track Polls | The Upshot​

In response to the above, its encouraging to see other newsrooms and agencies stepping in to try to recover or recreate some of the key work 538 were responsible for.

45. Periscopic Announces Closure After Twenty Years of Pioneering Data Visualization​

Another sad news story, this press release announces their closure of Periscopic, founded by Kim Rees and Dino Citraro, who contributed so much visual goodness for so many years. All the best to everyone involved in their next chapters.

46. Hello World | Jason Forrest on Bluesky​

It is therefore uplifting to see a good news story of something starting! And that something starting is the launch of Jason's new agency. All the very best Jason!

47. Everyone can draw | TEDx on Youtube​

This is a lovely TEDx talk by Chaz Hutton, whose work I've only recently come across but I love. In this he talks about drawing comics and 'howw even the most basic sketches can foster creativity and connection'.

48. Today in History | Michael Friendly on Bluesky​

"Mar 13, 1733 Joseph Priestley born in Leeds, England". More geographically precisely he was born in Birstall and we went to the same school. Not at the same time, I'm a few years younger.

49. Think Clearly | Penguin​

New book by superstar data journalist, Kiko Llaneras, offering 'Eight Simple Rules to Succeed in the Data Age'

50. Museum Of All Things​

"Visit the Museum of All Things, a nearly-infinite virtual museum generated from Wikipedia!" I'm pretty sure I've shared this in the old days of the 'best of visualisation' blog posts but a) I'm too lazy to check and b) I don't care if I have because its worth sharing again.

Thanks for reading!

Hi, I’m ANDY KIRK, an independent data visualisation expert. My vision is to deliver data viz excellence, everywhere. I offer data visualisation professional services to clients worldwide in my capacity as a design consultant, a prolific and experienced trainer, as a four-times published author, as a researcher and sought-after speaker. I'm editor of visualisingdata.com and host of the Explore Explain video and podcast series. If you have a desire to elevate your data viz capabilities, whether at the start of your journey or further along, get in touch.

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